Pakistani doctor in bin Laden hunt rejected US escape -officials

May 29, 2012|Reuters

* Reasons for rejecting relocation are unclear

* Doctor now serving 33 years for treason

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) - U.S. authorities said aPakistani doctor who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Ladenturned down an opportunity to leave his country and resettleoverseas with his family, two U.S. officials told Reuters onTuesday.

Dr. Shakil Afridi was jailed last week in Pakistan for 33years for treason and the Obama administration has come understeady criticism for its handling of his case.

The U.S. officials said the resettlement offer for Afridicame about the time of the May 1, 2011, raid in which U.S. NavySEAL commandos killed the al Qaeda leader at his complex inAbbottabad, Pakistan.

They indicated that Afridi's family would have been welcometo leave Pakistan with him as part of the resettlement plan. Theofficials said he rejected the offer for reasons that areunclear.

Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign inAbbottabad and used cheek swabs to try to gather DNA from binLaden's children to confirm the identity of those living in thecompound.

The DNA effort ultimately did not succeed but U.S. sourceshave told Reuters he helped American operatives locate andfollow the bin Laden courier who led them to the Abbottabadhideout.

The offer for Afridi to leave Pakistan was confirmedindependently by two U.S. officials. The White House and StateDepartment declined comment on the matter.

Afridi's case has damaged U.S.-Pakistan relations withoutraged U.S. senators voting last week to cut aid to Pakistanby $33 million - $1 million for each year of the doctor's prisonsentence.

Pakistan has said Washington should respect its court'sdecision.

POST-RAID ARREST

Pakistani authorities arrested Afridi several weeks afterthe bin Laden raid. In the intervening period, U.S. authoritiesbelieved they would have had ample time to get him out of thecountry if he had wanted to leave.

"Before he was arrested, Doctor Afridi was offeredopportunities to leave Pakistan with his family but he turnedthose down," one of the U.S. officials said.

"Some may question why he did this but no one, including thedoctor, could have foreseen that Pakistan would punish soseverely someone whose work benefited the country so much," theofficial said.

Another official said it was not usual for people inAfridi's situation to reject resettlement offers. The officialsaid Afridi may have believed that rather than becoming theobject of character attacks and accusations of treason byPakistani authorities, he might instead have won praise for hisrole in helping rid Pakistan of a threat to its security andstability.

Afridi's brother Jamil has described the treason charges asbaseless and said the doctor was being made a scapegoat.

"If my brother had done something wrong, he had a valid U.S.visa. He could have fled the country," Jamil said after thesentence was handed down, adding that the family had received nooffers of help from the U.S. government.

Deepening the controversy over the doctor, current andformer Pakistani officials in interviews with Reuters during theweekend described Afridi as a hard-drinking womanizer who hadfaced allegations of sexual assault. They said he also performedsurgeries without proper qualification.

U.S. officials responded by defending Afridi and saying theyknew of no reports of wrongdoing on his part.